Reeder 3 is the best Mac RSS app if you value the reading experience above everything else. The app is polished, fast and filled with intuitive gestures and shortcuts. Even if you’re loading 5,000 unread articles, it still won’t set your MacBook fans blazing.

The app has a three-pane UI. You’ll see your folders and sources in the first pane. The articles in the second and the article text in the third. Once an article is selected, just swipe left on the trackpad to open it in the built-in web browser. Or just press the keyboard shortcut (G) to expand the truncated article right there.

Reeder might not have pro level filtering options, but if a premium reading experience is what you crave, Reeder 3 is worth the $9.99 price of admission.

What you get instead is all the over-the-top features that Feedly’s web app is famous for. If you use the Feedly app on your iPhone or if you like Feedly’s features such as starring, saving, Boards, popularity ranking of articles and so on, you’ll like using Feedly for Mac. Just keep in mind that offline support is non-existent, and it’s not a “proper” RSS app like Reeder is.

I’ve heard people describe ReadKit as Reeder’s slightly-less-attractive sibling. While that’s not a wholesome way to describe an app, there is some truth to it. Design-wise, ReadKit doesn’t hold a candle to Reeder 3. That doesn’t mean it looks bad or it’s unusable. Structurally, ReadKit’s design is quite similar to Reeder: the three-pane UI, the sharing features, the typography options, the keyboard shortcuts, and so on.

While Reeder focuses more on the reading experience, ReadKit focuses on filters and gives you more control over what you see. First of all, you can read your Pocket, Instapaper and Pinboard feeds in ReadKit. The app also has Smart Folders support, allowing you to filter stories by a tight set a criteria.

You can create a folder that only lists articles that contain specific words, or from specific sources, that were published in the past 3 days. If you think you’d value this level of granular control over your feeds, check out ReadKit.

Khamosh Pathak is a freelance technology writer and User Experience Designer. When he's not helping people make the best of their current technology, he's helping clients design better apps and websites. In his free time, you'll find him watching comedy specials on Netflix and trying once again, to get through…